{"id":1971440,"date":"2025-08-21T00:55:51","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T00:55:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/?p=1971440"},"modified":"2025-08-21T00:55:51","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T00:55:51","slug":"the-opener-messick-phillies-royals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/the-opener-messick-phillies-royals\/","title":{"rendered":"The Opener: Messick, Phillies, Royals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"text\">\n<p>Here are three things we\u2019ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day today:<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Messick to make MLB debut:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Guardians are bringing southpaw <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=messic000par&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Parker Messick<\/a><\/strong> up to the majors for his <a target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.mlbtraderumors.com\/2025\/08\/guardians-to-promote-parker-messick.html\">MLB debut<\/a> today. The club\u2019s second-rounder back in 2022 has climbed the minor league ladder fairly quickly to emerge at Triple-A this year, where he\u2019s posted a solid 3.47 ERA and 29.1% strikeout rate across 98 2\/3 innings of work. Those are impressive numbers for the 24-year-old, and now he\u2019ll get the opportunity to see if his high strikeout rate can translate into the majors. The Guardians have managed to hang around the AL Wild Card picture despite soft selling this summer, but with <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/biebesh01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Shane Bieber<\/a><\/strong> in Toronto and <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bibeeta01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tanner Bibee<\/a><\/strong> in the midst of a tough season they\u2019ll need contributions from young arms like Messick if they\u2019re going to stay relevant down the stretch.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. Harper, Castellanos race towards milestone:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Phillies veterans <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/h\/harpebr03.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Bryce Harper<\/a><\/strong> and <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/casteni01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Nick Castellanos<\/a><\/strong> are both a considerable way into their respective careers at this point. While Harper\u2019s status as a two-time MVP far eclipses Castellanos\u2019s resume as a two-time All-Star, both have had impressive careers where they\u2019ve generally served as above-average hitters across their combined 27 years in the major leagues. Now the two teammates are chasing the same milestone: 400 career doubles. They\u2019ll likely become the 199th and 200th players in MLB history to reach that benchmark in the coming weeks, as Harper currently sits at 397 career doubles while Castellanos sits just one behind him at 396 two-baggers for his career. The pair will look to tee off of Mariners right-hander <strong><a target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/castilu02.shtml\">Luis Castillo<\/a><\/strong> (3.48 ERA) as the Phillies go for the sweep against Seattle this afternoon.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Royals pushing for Wild Card spot:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Kansas City made the somewhat surprising decision to buy at the trade deadline despite being slightly below .500 at that point and on the periphery of the AL Wild Card race, but that decision is paying off to this point. An 11-6 record in the month of August has put them just 2.5 games back of the Red Sox and Mariners in the race for a playoff spot with a 65-61 record. Deadline additions have improved the club considerably, with <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/g\/grichra01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Randal Grichuk<\/a><\/strong>, <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/f\/fraziad01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Adam Frazier<\/a><\/strong>, and <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/y\/yastrmi01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Mike Yastrzemski<\/a><\/strong> all injecting life into a previously weak offense while <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/bergery01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Ryan Bergert<\/a><\/strong> has settled in as a quality rotation arm with a 2.70 ERA in three starts for the club. Today they\u2019ll go for their second consecutive series sweep when they face the Rangers and an as-of-yet unannounced starting pitcher. Whoever starts for Texas will have to contend with rookie <strong><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/camerno01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=www.mlbtraderumors.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-08-20_br\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Noah Cameron<\/a><\/strong>, who has a 2.47 ERA in 17 starts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><em> \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em> \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.mlbtraderumors.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are three things we\u2019ll be keeping an eye on around the baseball world throughout the day today: 1. Messick to make MLB debut: The Guardians are bringing southpaw Parker Messick up to the majors for his MLB debut today. The club\u2019s second-rounder back in 2022 has climbed the minor league ladder fairly quickly to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1971441,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1971440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-royalty"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/The-Opener-Messick-Phillies-Royals.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1971440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1971440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1971441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1971440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1971440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1971440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}